Defense against Anti-Radiation Missiles

I have a question that is partially related to all this, I see there was a lot of talk about radars, systems and guidance methods, jamming and similar so this question kinda correlates to that. DO Buk's (M2E and probably M3), S-300PMU2 Favorit's and Pantsyrs have any chance against AGM-88E Advanced Anti- Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM)? It supposedly negates evading this advanced HARM by switching the radar off, would modern systems like Pantsyr, Buk, S-300/400 be able to still have effect against platforms firing these and would they be able to fool them? Because supposedly they can't be fooled by decoys, countermeasures and turning off radars...so there's not much left. I know that it's not always what they say in the cataloge, but still this advanced HARM looks quite scary!

Also can adjustments like ARH (Active radar homing) and Anti Radiation Seekers from Technical note #3 and #4 (BOTH)be fitted on a Buk missile (key word both, not just one of those) and S-300/400 missile? From this link: http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Legacy-SAM-Upgrades.html#mozTocId532833

And does anyone know the cost of one Buk-M2E battery and (I doubt but thought to ask) one Buk-M3 battery (at least what is it going to be, close to what, not a direct figure)? By battery I mean,except Radar, Mobile Controle Center, Launchers with radars and reloaders with missiles, also all those support, repair vehicles and spare parts and whatever goes into a fully functional and autonomous battery. Thank you in advance!

The current model and indeed previous model Russian SAMs defeat HARM in many ways... mobility is one, backup guidance options that don't involve radar is another, but the primary defence against HARM is range for the S-300 etc systems because most can shoot down the platform carrying HARM before it gets to a range where it can fire a HARM missile, and also for missiles from Pantsir-S1, TOR, BUK. S-300, S-300V, and S-400 the basic ability to shoot down the HARM missile itself in flight protects them from a HARM like attack.

Major SAM batteries will have a mix of long range SAMs with shorter range SAMs like Pantsir and TOR that will shoot down HARM and JDAM and other threats to the large SAM system. There is also jammers and of course decoy radar systems connected to the primary radars at the SAM site that operate in the same radar frequencies as the primary radar and actually can be powered from the same source that are designed to draw off HARM type weapons. These decoy radars are designed to be quite robust and hits and near misses from missiles really don't prevent them from emitting radiation and continuing to be a decoy. They don't need to create a coherent directional beam, nor do they need to receive that beam so short of blowing it into tiny pieces it is pretty hard to take out.

Most radar antennas will be blown over and defeated because of their size and relative fragility... they are made light weight so they can rotate... not to withstand near misses of warheads. They also need to retain their shape to transmit and receive a radar signal that is useful.

Once the radar is down the SAM transporter/erector/launchers (TELs) are often vulnerable to attack... for instance with the SA-6 SAM system there are 4-6 TELs and a radar vehicle that finds targets and directs missiles to those targets. Take out the radar vehicle with a HARM and you can fly in and drop dumb iron bombs and take out the TELs because they are now defenceless. The BUK replaced the KUB (SA-6) and it is a more expensive system but each TEL in the BUK system has a radar on it so using HARM to defeat the radar vehicle means you have to hit all the TELs too... and as the TELs can track HARM missiles and the later BUK missiles can defeat HARM missiles it becomes much harder to take out a BUK battery.The BUK can switch to optical mode and HARM is useless because there are no radar emissions it can home on.

Old model SA-6 can be upgraded with optical guidance too... as can most SAMs.

SerbNationalist wrote:I have a question that is partially related to all this, I see there was a lot of talk about radars, systems and guidance methods, jamming and similar so this question kinda correlates to that. DO Buk's (M2E and probably M3), S-300PMU2 Favorit's and Pantsyrs have any chance against AGM-88E Advanced Anti- Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM)? It supposedly negates evading this advanced HARM by switching the radar off, would modern systems like Pantsyr, Buk, S-300/400 be able to still have effect against platforms firing these and would they be able to fool them? Because supposedly they can't be fooled by decoys, countermeasures and turning off radars...so there's not much left. I know that it's not always what they say in the cataloge, but still this advanced HARM looks quite scary!

Well Pantsyr, Buk , S-300PMU-2 can kill both HARM and its carrier platform .. so there would always be a chance of survival .

and most importantly since all systems mentioned above have Phased Array RADAR, they would be quite difficult to be picked off by ESM's , since they have low sidelobe (in order of -30 till -70 Db) , SEAD Fighters will likely to be forced to use the RADAR's Mainlobe as "aimpoint" ..however this will expose themselves , as they're already detected and perhaps illuminated .

Also can adjustments like ARH (Active radar homing) and Anti Radiation Seekers from Technical note #3 and #4 (BOTH)be fitted on a Buk missile (key word both, not just one of those) and S-300/400 missile? From this link: http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Legacy-SAM-Upgrades.html#mozTocId532833

DO Buk's (M2E and probably M3), S-300PMU2 Favorit's and Pantsyrs haveany chance against AGM-88E Advanced Anti- Radiation Guided Missile(AARGM)? It supposedly negates evading this advanced HARM by switchingthe radar off, would modern systems like Pantsyr, Buk, S-300/400 beable to still have effect against platforms firing these and would theybe able to fool them? Because supposedly they can't be fooled bydecoys, countermeasures and turning off radars...so there's not muchleft. I know that it's not always what they say in the cataloge, butstill this advanced HARM looks quite scary!

Of cours they have. Air sefense is not only SAM or AA guns, but a whole complex of equipment and crews. One option of modern SAMs against any anti-radar missile is mobility. Let say, Pantsir could engage targets on the move, when is out of missiles and rounds, just turn off radars and drive fast. Air defense also have specialized sensors and chaffs and flares for anti-radar missiles like Gazetchik in Russian PVO. Next option is specialized false emmiter of radar, which is placed on proper distance and anti-radar missile will lock on false emmiter. Next are decoys and at last modern SAMs and AA guns could shot down anti-radar missiles. Their speed and RCS is inside their capabilities. Pantsir and Tor are specially designed to engage anti-radar missiles, bombs and ASMs.

Thank you for the replies, I was just asking around, because I found out about this new HARM missile, it's actually called AARGM, it looks really scary, it has some new tracking system that is no longer just passive, actually it's new sensors kinda remind me of Pantsyrs a little bit, that's why I asked. Thank you anyway! And any ideas on the prices of Buk-M2e and M3?

The only ARM with a proven record of being scary is ALARM and even that can be shot down.

It is 1,000 times more effective than HARM which in terms of hitting targets pretty mediocre... in the Kosovo conflict hundreds were fired with no effect.

With modern Russian missiles even the ALARM would be ineffective except in enormous numbers to overwhelm the systems.

The original HARM was pretty pathetic and just flew towards a radar emission till impact, or more commonly... till the radar turned off and the HARM hit the ground.

Even the AS-11 (Kh-58) was far more sophisticated with an INS and targeting pod so that the launch aircraft actually worked out the physical location of the target radar before the missile was launched so that even if the radar was turned off the missile would continue to fly towards the radars last known location and with a 150kg HE warhead even a near miss could blow over the antenna of a large radar system.

GarryB wrote:The only ARM with a proven record of being scary is ALARM and even that can be shot down.

It is 1,000 times more effective than HARM which in terms of hitting targets pretty mediocre... in the Kosovo conflict hundreds were fired with no effect.

With modern Russian missiles even the ALARM would be ineffective except in enormous numbers to overwhelm the systems.

The original HARM was pretty pathetic and just flew towards a radar emission till impact, or more commonly... till the radar turned off and the HARM hit the ground.

Even the AS-11 (Kh-58) was far more sophisticated with an INS and targeting pod so that the launch aircraft actually worked out the physical location of the target radar before the missile was launched so that even if the radar was turned off the missile would continue to fly towards the radars last known location and with a 150kg HE warhead even a near miss could blow over the antenna of a large radar system.

Oh trust me I know about HARM's and ALARM's we f***ed those easily, I even know how they did it, some logs, some decoys (not even high tech, simple ones) and turn off the radar. It's just that this new stuff lucks kinda more advanced, because we all know that best defense against that type of missile was just to turn off your radar...now that doesn't help, it tracks it anyway, didn't read how exactly! But I guess that Buk wich can turn off the radar and mover right away should have no problems, eve without shooting it down! Not to mention some new decoy radars and similar stuff, but thank you for the clarification and info anyway.An interesting fact...they used to fire between 20-30 anti-radar missiles (HARM or ALARM) every night in 1999, their hit success rate, even counting decoy radars and old radars that we left on just to turn their attention was less than 3%! So I guess even with this new one they can't be that good if Serbia dealt with such a force back then with small and old equipment!

HARM is not total rubbish, the problem is that its role was SEAD, or suppression of enemy air defence systems.

The problem there is that if a system has other means of detecting and engaging enemy aircraft then HARM becomes useless.

For instance the use of BUK by Georgia in 2008 was successful because they were tied into the NATO AD network and were supplied with air target information from Turkey, so the BUK battery could operate in radar and radio silence and engage targets in optical mode.

My understanding of the new HARMs is that they use the signal from the emitting radar to calculate the position of the radar which they store in an inertial navigation system so that even if the radar turns off the missile will fly towards the last emitting location of the radar.

Some large radars simply cannot be moved in time and will be hit anyway.

The solution for those radars is a SAM to shoot down not just the HARMs but also the launch platforms.

The BMP-3 has a 100mm laser beam riding anti armour missile it can fire through its main gun, which allows it to fire while moving as long as a clear line of sight to the target can be maintained.They are developing new 57mm gun ammo that is semi active laser homing that should also be able to be fired from a moving vehicle and with newer ammo design it should be possible to greatly extend range and performance... as a CIWS it trades rate of fire for terminal accuracy and individual round cost with greatly reduced ammo expenditure requirements for most targets.

Needless to say 4-5 laser target markers with optical autotrackers and thermal imagers and 3-4 vehicles with a single 57mm gun with 100 odd guided shells per vehicle and 20 ready to use shells in an autoloader with a 2-3 minute autoloader reload time should protect any target from any attempt to overwhelm the target.

Give it a big AESA radar that can track targets the size of grains of sand with 4 faces for 360 degree coverage and a battle management computer that finds the greatest threats and guides the LTMs to the most threatening targets and instead of launching 120 cruise missiles to take out an entire countries air defence (Libya) they would need to fire 120 cruise missiles at each AD node... and the cost difference between a long range cruise missile and a 57mm laser guided shell would mean most countries should be OK. Especially if you have a few Igla-S units located 10km away from the HQ you are defending that receive advanced warning of the incoming threat so they know where to look and are ready to fire at the incoming missile.A Pantsir-S1 battery could also be located at important targets and engage all sorts of threats too.The 57mm gun armed vehicles however have the advantage of being able to engage multiple targets at once and with a high rate of fire and large ammo store of available rounds.

Serbs use many different kinds of decoys, so microwave ovens could be between them. But, how effective they are, I don't know. Anyway Serbs show, they were masters of decoys and camouflage. After the war many start to learn this art.

Naturally even very outdated samples of those type of those short range SAMs ('80 years technology) are represented exclusively by TELARs capable of cooperative engagement and "shoot and scout" techniques.

But naturally this is not a problems for western ARM's operators ; what them are intended to confront is no more than some vastly downgraded samples of antidiluvian SA-2 ,SA-3 and SA-6 outside any serious IAD (even for '70 yeres standards ) devoid of any aid asset ,operated mostly by incompetent crew and..... attacked by entire NATO coalition.

The best ARM tactic is to attack enemy not capable to defend himself in any way .

KomissarBojanchev wrote:Are there any gazetchik CM launchers in Russian service today or are they an export product without any success domestic or abroad?

Yes they are in service within Russian army and much more.

Zivo wrote:Is their any truth behind the use of microwave oven decoys in Kosovo?

True.

Mindstorm wrote:Naturally even very outdated samples of those type of those short range SAMs ('80 years technology) are represented exclusively by TELARs capable of cooperative engagement and "shoot and scout" techniques.

Exactly.

For instance deployment time of even entire regiment echelon is incredible 5 minutes.

Mixed brigades takes only 20 minutes to deploy. Unthinkable in western minds.

nemrod wrote:Does it exist a way to counter this kind of missiles ? And how ? Does Russia get a tactic ? If yes, what ?

Problem of defending against ARM is by my opinion wrongly put question. Why?

Because the question does not define situation so we have an option to include everything (basically write a book) and nothing.

Something partly defined would leave out many options that are available to Russian army and PVO so again you would not get an full

answer to your question. Problematics include following:

- Defining whether we are talking about Russia or some other country with what assets

(Russia has much more than any other country different options on the table)

- Defining whether we are talking about Army PVO or Territorial PVO or perhaps all of them combined

(there are differences about the two and one could argue which one has better chances to handle the problem)

- Defining the striking force

(are we talking about USA, whole NATO alliance, or some random country etc)

- Defining problems of information gathering

(you need to know where your target is and for an a attacking force intelligence gathering process is a HUGE problem

unless you count on a situation where attacking planes can safely surf the skies and look for targets - intelligence gathering

can represent unsolvable problems except for most advanced countries)

Yes Russian designed air defense has really numerous options against numerous threats including ARM because of:

- concept of its air defense (air defense understands air force, air defense (SAMs), radar coverage etc)- the way Russians design its air defense (absolute and redundant integration on a unimaginable scale)- brute technical characteristic of its air defense assets - layered defense (5-6 layers of missiles with more to come )- mobility (Russians basically invented "shoot and scope" technique with its 5min deployment S-300 time and others, very important)- numerous deception techniques they have developed and proved to be successful (radar decoy, pneumatic decoy, camouflage nets etc)- numerous other assets like ground ECM, passive radar systems etc - variety of tactics employed with educated staff to man them- infrastructure (prepared firing positions with numerous other reserve firing positions, etc)- communication links (cable, wireless staff and equipment)- low level radar, orderly radar systems, reserve radar system, in depth radar systems, forward radar systems in all frequency )- numbers of fighters working within air defense assets and as part of it- spys network and organization working for PVO (with some of interesting tasks put in front of them)- range (range of the damn things has increased few times since the fall of SSSR and is simply terrifying for any western airforce analyst)

Each of these lines has its story. Rather in depth one and that each story has its strictly defined purpose within huge organisation

now called Aerospace Defense Forces. Now this is not all but is surely most important.

Thing is that Russian air defense is designed to cope with several hundreds of fighters

coming from few different sides simultaneously. Nowhere in the world exists anything like it.

It is huge, numerous, integrated, mobile, robust and flexible. It is able to cope with much more than just ARM .

nemrod wrote:Does it exist a way to counter this kind of missiles ? And how ? Does Russia get a tactic ? If yes, what ?

Really anti-radiation missiles exist in World Powers arsenal since the early 60's. There is nothing revolutionary about defeating them.To give you an example , First generations of anti-radiation missiles like AGM-45 Shrike ,you could defeat them by simply turning off your radar = no radiation ,blinding totally the missile since what he seeks do not exist until you have something emitting radio waves. Moder missiles like AGM-88 HARM ,have inertial guidance ,by satelite of where the target is, so in my best guess with such guidance you can turn off the seeker until the last minutes of impact ,and making it a bit more stealthy to normal radars. Still inertial guidance by satellite lacks of precision so if the radar is turned off ,it might miss a direct hit or totally miss. To counter this you will try sending waves of missiles at the target usually radars ,to force it to be turned off for long periods ,to penetrate its air defenses. To counter them there are infinite ways.

Most cheap way is decoys ,you can create decoys that looks 100% identical to the radar the missile seeks. In effect the missile will not know the difference between something that looks like a barbeque grill or a tank or radar. Why another kind of guidance is necessary by GPS ,that tells a close approximation of the radar will be.

But then you could have mobile radars , or have static ones but mounted on elevators that are covered with a reinforced concrete wall in case of danger. There are also jammers to confuse the guidance of the missiles. Any S-300s or better system can defeat them. They can be defeated by Pantzirs that detect such missiles ,But in my opinion the most practical ,easier ,economical and more secure way to defeat them..is by destroying them Before they enter on your land. you can do that using heat seeking missiles ,that anti-radiation missiles or even stealth planes cannot hide.. its Heat. Migs-29k i think have missiles specially optimized to destroy cruise missiles and anti-radiation missiles. They are small ,cheap and more faster than the attacking missiles. So anti-radiation missiles cannot escape from missiles chasing their heat signal. Contrary to combat jets , anti radiation missiles do not deploy decoys. So destroying them is not hard at all. If they are subsonic like Harpoons slow in speed.. even simple machine gun fire could defeat them. Anti-radiation missiles ,however just like any missile or rocket when used in big numbers can overwhelm any defense system. This is why having Mobile Radars and an airforce that fully covers a country airspace is important. Specially if the country is small and do not have very large zones of defense..

In my opinion ,Ballistic missiles like Iskanders are much more lethal , they cannot be stopped by combat jets , heavy machine guns or fooled by decoys ,and Russia claims not even Patriots defense system can defeat them,because of their hypersonic mach 7-9 speed and other coounter measures.Their accuracy is in the ~5-7 meters and with a near 1,000 kg warhead ,should be enough to pulverize anything withing a 100 meters range.,if not mistaken ,that was what russia used to disable Georgian system of air defenses which NATO helped them to prepare. If you use anti-radiation missiles in the other hand you will need to counter its high vulnerability to decoys ,heat seekers missiles and heavy machine guns with numbers ,to overwhelm their defenses.and ideally having troops on the ground painting with a lazer the target.

Russia approach seems to be more brute force and power ,than surgical strikes.

here is amateur video taken from georgia war , russia firing ballistic missiles TOCHKA-U to Georgia.

Lets not forget Russia successfully used anti radiation missiles in 080808 war. SU-34 did splendid job and dispatched couple radar installations along with their (ukrainian?) operators. It's not like Russia have no interest in SEAD.

Vann7 wrote:In my opinion ,Ballistic missiles like Iskanders are much more lethal , they cannot be stopped by combat jets , heavy machine guns or fooled by decoys ,and Russia claims not even Patriots defense system can defeat them,because of their hypersonic mach 7-9 speed and other coounter measures.Their accuracy is in the ~5-7 meters and with a near 1,000 kg warhead ,should be enough to pulverize anything withing a 100 meters range.,if not mistaken ,that was what russia used to disable Georgian system of air defenses which NATO helped them to prepare. If you use anti-radiation missiles in the other hand you will need to counter its high vulnerability to decoys ,heat seekers missiles and heavy machine guns with numbers ,to overwhelm their defenses.and ideally having troops on the ground painting with a lazer the target.

One does not expect to see Russian Army having to rely on Russian Airforce to clear out radar and SAM sites

Actually HARM has only very recently gotten the ability to engage targets that turn off before impact. In comparison the Kh-58 has had that capacity for a fairly long time.

If you want to talk about a good ARM then you should be talking about ALARM which has a range of operating modes including one where it fires its rocket motor and climbs to high altitude and then deploys a parachute and listens for enemy radar signatures as it descends. If a radar is turned on it cuts the chute and fires up its rocket motor and rapidly accelerates to the target.

Remember an ARM doesn't need to kill anything to be effective... often just getting the enemy to turn off their radar can be enough to allow the strike group to get past.

The best way to defeat an ARM is to shoot it and the aircraft that launched it and the group of aircraft it was defending down. No one SAM system can do that, but the combination of Vityaz, Pantsir-S1, and/or S-400 can shoot down the missile and the launcher of the missile and the aircraft it was trying to defend.

Iraq developed and deployed anti HARM and anti ALARM decoys during the 1990s and were used rather effectively during the running battles in the no-fly-zones between 1992-2003. In 2003 when the US invaded 95% of Iraq's surveillance and targeting radars were still functional despite many hundreds of HARMs fired at them over a 12+ year period.

In fact they were also the first ones to deploy anti AMRAAM and anti AGM-130 (signal jamming) tactics and devices... probably helped to exacerbate the rapid development of AMRAAM variants unwittingly too...

As mentioned there are lots of ways of defeating ARMs, but if you think about the purpose of ARMs as being to let a group of aircraft penetrate airspace covered by enemy air defences then just turning off radars is self defeating unless you have reliable backup methods of scanning the skies and destroying aircraft.

Modern Russian SAMs will likely have thermal optical backups that will allow enemy aircraft to be engaged even when the radar are turned off.

Equally as part of a network you can have 10 radar located around the place with only one or two radar actually scanning with the other 8 radar listening. Objects that don't appear on the scanning radars screens, but appear as radio wave signals on other radars in the network as emission sources could be triangulated and identified as stealth aircraft that have redirected the active radar signals from the two active radars so the signal did not return to those emitters. The angles the signals are redirected is fixed by the shape of the aircraft, but the aircraft will not know where the radar that are just listening are positioned and cannot anticipate where the deflected radar signal might be redirected to.

Wild Weasel aircraft detecting the two emitting radar sites can launch missiles at those two sites, but the missiles themselves will be detected along with the launch platforms and likely also the aircraft both are trying to protect. As the missiles get close to the active radar they can turn off, though with their inertial guidance they still could hit them, but if two more radar turn on that are a significant distance away the ARMs might turn and try to reach those instead, but lack the energy to reach them and end up just hitting the ground.

Another option as mentioned above are custom made jamming decoy systems which are connected to the radar arrays of large SAMs that transmit radar signals that match the SAM Radars they are connected to... they even share power... but they are not radars... they are armoured and have basic solidly build individual antenna elements that can easily be replaced in the field so when an ARM is detected the main radar shuts down and the decoy turns on for a few seconds till hit, then the main radar turns on again while the decoy is checked and replacement parts are fitted if needed.

The best solution however, which the Russians have adapted is everything... including multiple redundant radars (with all their SAM batteries they don't all need long range search radar, but they all have them) that are mobile and tied in to an integrated air defence network/system, plus decoys, and of course the upgraded missiles are able to engage enemy aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, and high speed ARMs. They also generally have optical backup guidance options but that is not so much for use in an environment with lots of ARMs, it is actually for heavy jamming environments.